China’s auto sales accelerated in the first two months of this year, rising 19.5 percent over the same period of 2012 in a possible positive sign for an economic recovery.
Automakers sold 2.8 million cars in January and February, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers reported Monday. Total sales, including trucks and buses, rose 14.7 percent to 3.4 million vehicles.
That growth was an improvement over 2012 ’s full year rate of 7.1 percent for cars and 4.3 percent for vehicles overall.
“We expect cyclical recovery in the Chinese economy to continue in 2013,” said JP Morgan economist Haibin Zhu in a report. “The gradual improvement in the macro environment would likely support some moderate growth in auto sales during the year.”
Global automakers are looking to China, the biggest market by number of vehicles sold, to drive revenue amid weakness elsewhere.Sales that grew by double digits in early 2012 decelerated because of an economic slump and ownership curbs imposed by some cities to control traffic and smog.
The communist government is promoting auto manufacturing and ownership but has tried to fine-tune policies to encourage sales of smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles.
A government forecast in January said total vehicle sales should rise to 20.8 million this year, up from 19.3 million last year.
General Motors Co., Nissan Motor Co. and Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz have introduced lower-priced Chinese brands for the vast but poor rural market.
GM said sales of GM brand vehicles by the company and its Chinese joint venture partners rose 7.9 percent in January and February over a year earlier to 525,835 vehicles. Ford Motor Co. said sales rose 46 percent to 105,209 vehicles.
Nissan said its sales in January and February were down 14.1 percent from a year earlier to 174,000 vehicles. However, the company said that was an improvement after a plunge in sales last year.
Sales of Japanese brands suffered because of tensions between China and Tokyo over disputed islands in the East China Sea, which kept buyers away from the showrooms of Japanese automakers.
India’s annual car sales are poised to decline for the first time in a decade as faster inflation, slowing economic growth and high interest rates continue to keep buyers from showrooms.
Local deliveries declined 4.6 percent to 1.71 million cars in the 11 months ended in February, the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers said Monday. Annual deliveries last declined in the year ended March 2003, the group said.
Car makers from Suzuki Motor Corp. to Ford Motor Co. are introducing new models and variants, and offering discounts as the industry group in January lowered its full-year domestic car sales forecast for the third time in six months as demand wanes. February car sales fell 26 percent to 158,513 units, the biggest monthly drop since December 2000, the group said.
“India’s economy is not doing very well,” Sugato Sen, the deputy director general of the group, said in New Delhi on Monday. “In such times, the discretionary purchases get hit first and small cars have been affected the most.”
The slowdown in India comes as the European auto market is set to shrink for a sixth consecutive year, according to IHS Automotive research.
Maruti Suzuki India Ltd., the local unit of Suzuki, closed one of its factories for a day last week to pare inventory. The automaker said March 1that domestic deliveries fell 9 percent in February, led by a 16 percent drop in its minicar sales.
Hyundai Motor Co. said on March 1 its sales in India last month fell 7.6 percent to 34,002 vehicles. Tata Motors Ltd., maker of the world’s cheapest car, the Nano, reported a 70 percent drop in passenger-vehicle sales for February to the lowest in a decade.
“We still hope we’re bottoming out and hope we’ll improve in future,” Sen said.
Asia’s third-biggest economy expanded 4.5 percent in the three months through Dec. 31 from a year earlier, the weakest pace in almost four years, a report showed Feb. 28.
Information for this article was contributed by Karthikeyan Sundaram and by Siddharth Philip of Bloomberg News.
Business, Pages 23 on 03/12/2013